Sonntag, 24. November 2013

40 Records In 40 Years (17/40 - 1990)

How in the last chapter intimated I fell in love with a girl far away from my hometown. During the week we kept contact with telephone (the technical possibilities from today were not available to us) and writing letters. On most of the weekends we tried to see each other. Sometimes she took the train, sometimes I drove to Cologne by car. We have spent our first common vacation in the Dominican Republic. We have flown on the 30th of April with the Dutch airline KLM after Puerta Plata. I am able to do myself to the date, therefore, I remember so well, because in the air all passengers had to get up and we had to drink a lot to sweeten Dutch liqueur to the ten-year-old throne jubilee of the queen Beatrix. I have never been to the Greater Antilles or the Caribbean Sea before and therefore, I was quite excited to get to know country and people. After all it was fantastic to get to this country before it got popular to travel there with all this all-inclusive tourism. We met there very less European folks but a lot of from the United States. But people tell me that this island is still beautiful yet and covered with a lot of beautiful beaches. What made us both sad, was when we crossed the border to Haiti for a short visit seeing what Papa Doc and Baby Doc did to this country.

Back in Germany we had resolved to move together. Because Kerstin is a qualified nurse, she also had no problems to get a job in South Germany a job in the ambulant care.

Not much records that was released this year, that were remarkable for me. I don't know the reasons therefore:

Happy Mondays - Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches: Hedonism pure with psychedelic grooves and borrowed hooks
Neil Young - Ragged Glory: Together with Crazy Horse again - awesome
A Tribe Called Quest - People Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm: Fantastic grooves
Blue Aeroplanes - Swagger: That's how collage rock should sound like
Urban Dance Squad - Mental Floss For The Globe: Cross-Over and Funk-Metal from the Netherlands

Just a few songs that was worth to remember in 1990:

Dances With Wolves: Great entertainment and the return of Western movies
Pretty Woman: No chance to miss this classical love movie
The Godfather III: The final of a great trilogy
Edward Scissorhands: Beautiful fairy tale with wonderful pictures and a great Johnny Depp
Misery: Kathy Bates at her best
Wild At Heart: David Lynch tells the story of Lula and Sailor of unfinished dreams
Blue Steel: One of the best cop movies ever

If I look back at this year, remains to me following in recollection:

Rowan Atkinson appears as Mr. Bean on Television // Mass demonstrations in Lithuania for independence // Thousand storm the Stasi headquarter in East Berlin in an attempt to view their government records // Apartheid in South Africa: F.W. de Klerk announces the unbanning of the ANC and promises to release Nelson Mandela // Final agreement for a two-step plan to reunite Gerrmany // Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first ever President of the Soviet Union // Imelda Marcos goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement and racketeering // Massive anti-poll demonstration on Trafalgar Square turns into a riot // Food poisoning kills 450 guest at an engagement party in Uttar Pradesh // WHO removes homosexuality from the list of diseases // Bush/Gorbachev signs a treaty to end the production of chemical weapons and begin destroying their respective stocks // Germany wins the FIFA World Cup by defeating Argentine 1:0 with a penalty // Tamil Tigers kill 168 Muslims in Colombo, Sri Lanka and the start of a bloody civil war // Iraq invades Kuwait eventually leading to Gulf War I

At this time I listened a lot to bands from New York which are in narrow connection with the so-called No-Wave or Mutant disco scene to see like James Chance, Defunkt and Material. Over this connection I recognized that Don and David Was released a couple of records over the last years. The song I knew were always good stuff. Was (not Was) were famous for their collaboration with musicians from other genres. On this record they collaborated with Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen and The Roches. They also tried to get Jade Jagger to the microphone to sing Papa was a Rolling Stone. But sadly it was only a great idea. This record is filled with a lot of great ideas and probably one of the best results combining jazz, disco, rock and cover versions to very own and special sound you could dance too.